[OTR-users] Jabber, OTR and offline messages

Ian Goldberg ian at cypherpunks.ca
Mon Feb 19 17:26:38 EST 2007


On Mon, Feb 19, 2007 at 09:45:51PM +0100, Paul Wouters wrote:
> 
> I think I have run into a bug.
> 
> Someone tried to talk to be, knows I can do OTR, and tried to talk to me.
> But this was jabber and I logged off. When I logged on, I was instantly
> greeted with the stored OTR init message, but the reply didn't work. I'm
> not sure if this was because the user was now offline, or because his
> initial request timed out. This event crossed us a few times before we
> managed to talk.

OTR requests don't time out.  If your buddy was online (and had not
quite gaim since sending the original message), the OTR handshake would
have succeeded.

> The question is what to do in this case? If OTR knows about the jabber
> state of the target (online or offline), then it probably should refuse
> a new OTR connection. But it should definitely not send a plaintext
> message either, especially because it can be stored on the jabber server
> for a while before the other party logs on again to retrieve it.
> 
> On the other hand, if OTR does not know about the jabber online/offline
> status of the remote user, then I do not know what the proper way is for
> dealing with this issue.

We decided to try OTR even if the other guy doesn't appear to be online.
Remember that, even if he's currently offline, he still may have an
active OTR session with you.  In that event, the Jabber server would
store the OTR-encrypted message, and he'll be able to read it the next
time he's online.  [This happens if you disconnect from the net, or from
Jabber, but leave gaim running, for example.]

   - Ian



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